Jenni

^^ For some reason the little beastie on the pie crust looks like a turtle or tortoise to me! But I must be hallucinating because that can be right...right?

Don't tempt me! Another stupid idea. What with it being made of a cultured milk product and containing garlic, it's sort of reminding me of those delicious middle eastern sauces made of yoghurt and garlic that are stabilised (with egg or cornflour or whatever) and heated up to make a hot sauce. There's one in Madhur Jaffrey's 'Eastern Vegetarian' cookbook that goes over stuffed courgettes and is delicious. I'm thinking if you gently heated ranch dressing before adding the chopped herbs and lime juice and then add the herbs off the heat at the end (lime juice probably wouldn't be needed here) you would get a pretty damn delicious warm sauce. Sacrilege? Insanity? I may try it anyway.

^^ Well I was thinking that actual buttermilk (liquid leftover from churning butter) would be rather thin for this. However, if you did use it the end result would be a bit like a riff on one of the world's greatest cooling drinks, popular in many incarnations all over India (especially the South): a few sample recipes. It wouild just be...er...garlic/chive-y! Anyway, resisting the temptation to just drink the stuff, I may have a go with serving it on some steamed veggies. I'm not really a salad person if we are talking lettuce and leaf type salads, and anyway such things are not easy to get here. Plus who is eating raw leafy greens in monsoon?! But one some veggies over rice sounds pretty good. ETA: By the way I wasn't going to add any mayo as I don't do eggs. Will the result still be good? Recipe does say it is optional...

Like Simon, I too had never heard of this mysterious "ranch dressing" until the pizza idiosyncrasies thread. I promptly looked up the wikipedia article and then quickly dismissed it as basically a mayonnaise-y sauce. However, have to say that the following sounds rather nice: Interestingly (to me), they list mayonnaise as an optional addition to make a "less runny" dressing. Do you just crush the garlic to a fine paste and mix it all together? And are we talking cultured buttermilk (the yoghurt-like stuff) or proper buttermilk?

Tamarind can be used in a variety of ways and I am sure that it can be combined with fish in lots of forms. But the one I have come across most often is the use of tamarind in fish "curry", that is to say in a spiced fish "stew". Such dishes are common in South India and Sri Lanka, and I wouldn't be surprised if fish "curry" with tamarind is made in East Asia too. Another fruit that is used instead of tamarind in such dishes and in fact I think is actually preferred is kodampuli. The latin name for this fruit is garcinia something-or-other. Either this or this wikipedia article is talking about it. Also, another fruit called kokum is also used for this purpose. I'm pretty sure that kodampuli and kokum are two different but related fruits. They certainly both have garcinia in the name...maybe they are in fact the same thing! It's a bit confusing and I don't pretend to have it clearly sorted in my head. Here are a few recipes I found on google: Andhra style, using tamarind And anotherAndhra style dish with tamarind from a very well known blog Two Kerala style recipes with kodampuli

I just meant that when people are sick or recovering they tend to like to eat things that are familiar to them such as particular favourite dishes.

Some kind of soup would be comforting yet potentially quite light. What kind of food does your friend like?

Rona thanks for clarifying your story about not paying for drinks. I hope you don't mind that I asked. Actually I was curious as to how a restaurant responds to this sort of thing. In many ways it would probably be best for a restaurant to comp the upset patrons' drinks and let them leave, which seems to be what happened in your case. But I expect some places would definitely not allow that, and of course it would depend on how much "blame" could be placed on the customer for the service issues.

Aha, fresh chickpeas! In India they are probably most often roasted and salted and eaten as a snack. You buy them from a street vendor and they will still be in their little green jacket. Best thing to do is sit outside your house with some friends and peel and eat them at leisure. I think the season for them is January, February or something like that. That's when I've had them anyway. Having said that my Dad, living in the UK, is growing some kala chana (small, dark Indian chickpea) that I started to sprout and promptly forgot about. They are doing quite well, as seen in the following pic, so I guess the season varies by country and climate! In your picture it looks like they are slightly damp so have you steamed or boiled them?

For my part, I am not being "mean" or rude about Ree, I am just stating that I personally do not like her (as she appears on her blog) but I wish her well in her endeavours (and as I say, I do think she will be successful). I agree that some people get very personal and offensive when discussing celebrities, Food Network and otherwise, but I don't think we should automatically shut down all non-positive comments. Non-vulgar/ childish negative comments can be perfectly valid.

Tamarind and fish is definitely a combo that works.

Really? I don't set out to waste crust/edges but towards the end of a pizza when I am feeling full I do start to leave the outer crust as it has less or even no topping. Having said that, I should point out that I prefer a very thin pizza and do not really like to eat lots of bread (I love carbs, just not bread). So I'd rather save room for delicious toppings than dry bread.

Ah, too bad. I was interested in that "fright head" that forms in the steamed milk. Very mystical, it seemed to me. Oh but it is mystical. As with many things (hot chocolate, cream soda, guinness - or at least so this non drinker hears - , bubble baths), the froth/foam is one of the best bits!

^^ The only brown rice I have ever eaten was brown basmati and it cooked in barely 5 minutes more time than regular basmati. Of course, would depend on the type of rice and how you cooked it. Speaking from a strictly personal point of view, parboiled rice also takes a long time to cook and I cook that often so the time taken by longer cooking varities of brown rice probably wouldn't phase me. By the time you have cooked other stuff to go with the meal, set the table, etc, the rice is done

This is an excellent point. Actually I think it's something that can be said of many cuisines - what you use and how you cook it can depend on the season, available produce, how you feel that day, personal preference...and let's not talk about pinning down specific quantities! To me it makes a lot of sense - a specific ingredient can vary hugely in taste and how it behaves depending on factors such as weather or what that particular crop was like so it doesn't really make sense to fix a recipe with rigid quantities.

Each to their own but I will admit that I laughed at this thread a bit, due to the thought of paying extra to buy cooked rice. Of course, it's a time saver that some find useful and I'm only chuckling good naturedly. But where I am it is common to sort of do the exact opposite - if you and your friends feel like getting food delivered one evening, you order dal, sabzis, paneer, meat, "Chinese", rotis, etc. but cook plain rice at home!

Please blame my phones auto correct for that last post! I meant "so that a frothy head forms" Sent from my HTC Wildfire S A510e using Tapatalk

South Indian coffee is made with extremely strong coffee. The coffee itself is prepared and then milk is heated up to boiling point, either with sugar in the milk or sugar is put in the cups. The strong filtered coffee is put the cups (it is just a small quantity) and the cup is filled up with hot milk from a height ai that a fright head forms. Btw serving sizes are very small and nothing like the giant mugs you see in the West. So this is a coffee made with a significant amount if milk compared to the coffee. But it us also very strong coffee. And sweet too! It is divine and the only coffee I can be bothered with. I don't know what milk "does" to the coffee but it tastes amazing.

I was really hoping you would be the blogger! Your first post is already amazing, and I will be eagerly reading this blog everyday!

Oh I so hope you are right!

I don't hate her because I don't even know her, but I don't particularly like her. There are two reasons: 1. Her food does nothing for me. I'm not saying it's necessarily terrible, it just doesn't interest me at all. 2. I get this feeling from her that she's very...contrived. I think she's a smart woman who markets herself very skillfully, but it sets my teeth on edge. I don't mind that she's obviously very wealthy (and I'm not sure that's why her "haters" dislike her either - I mean look at Ina Garten. She's obviously well off and most people either like her or feel neutral about her). It's just that she has this whole thing where she's just a little ol' rancher's housewife and it doesn't ring true at all. That said, I think she has a large fan base and will probably do well.

Absolutely not, I just have a big mouth Whatever you end up doing, why not take some photos to share with us here?

K. T. Achaya was probably the best Indian food historian. You can see the wikipedia page on him here which lists the books he wrote. I have 'Indian food, A Historical Companion' and also 'The Story of our Food'. For more regionally specific details it's worth looking into authors from that area. Penguin India has a great series on "Essential" regional cuisines, and at the front of each of these there is some historical and cultural information that is very informative and interesting. I have 'Essential Goa', 'Essential Maharashtrian' and 'Essential Kerala' so far. These are not books specifically about history but they certainly do have some information in them and they are worth getting as cookbooks anyway. Then there's Chitrita Banerji for Bengali cuisine. She writes much about the traditional culture of Bengal in terms of food and this does include historical information. I have 'Bengali Cooking: Seasons and Festivals' and 'Hour of the Goddess: Memories of Women, Food, and Ritual in Bengal'. These are very good. I also have 'Eating India' but this is less good as she is not so fluent with other Indian cuisines and gets a bit distracted by anything Bengali! Another regional author is Ammini Ramachandran. Her book 'Grains, greens and grated coconuts' is not only a fascinating and delicious work on a particular style of vegetarian cookery in Kerala, but it also gives some excellent historical and cultural details that are perhaps little known outside of the specific community she writes about. Her website, which I linked to with her name, also has several articles on it. There is of course much more, but these may be an interesting start for you.

Sweets + snacks + card games + fireworks = perfect diwali

FWIW, dal texture varies in India. Some people do make quite thin dal, others thick. It depends on personal preference, regional variations, what particular dal dish you are making, how you feel on any given day and what you are serving the dal with. Dal is very often eaten mixed with rice and it adds moisture and flavour. You can see how making thin dal would make it go further and thus make it economical to feed a big crowd. I also simmer dal uncovered, but I don't measure out water. I add what I feel it needs and adjust as necessary to get the texture I want as the cooking goes on. One thing I will mention - different people are particular about the texture of the dal in terms of how cooked they like it. And masoor dal is certainly one of the quickest cooking dals so it's easy to ruin it - depending on how you like it of course